1. Field of the Description
The present description relates, in general, to software and hardware systems supporting digital musical composition and playback, and, more particularly, to a system (and corresponding gaming or musical composition methods) for providing a rhythm-based musical game for enjoyment by a group of one-to-many (e.g., 1 to 15 or more) participants. The system is adapted to facilitate the group to interact in a collaborative manner to create a digital track or musical composition even though the participants may be strangers with limited or even no musical training.
2. Relevant Background
There are numerous settings where music is played to enhance the experience of visitors. More recently, there has a been a growing demand for the visitors of facilities such as musical museums or displays, malls, and amusement parks to be able to immerse themselves in an experience and to interact with the other visitors to create a more enjoyable experience, and there have been many calls for this immersive and/or interactive experience to include creating or modifying the music being played in a real time and interactive way.
As a specific example, amusement and theme park operators often define their parks and areas within their parks by groups of characters and the worlds or lands that these characters exist within or call home. Visitors to the parks find the “worlds” or “lands” defined by many things with music being one of the most important. Historically, though, music in amusement and theme parks has been a mostly passive experience in the sense that it was something the visitors simply received or perceived and not something that the visitors interacted with or created except in some more rare cases where a character or show cast member facilitated their participation (e.g., provided guidance or directed the visitors' collaboration).
There are a number of challenges or problems in creating an interactive and collaborative music experience for use in amusement or theme parks and other facilities open to many visitors. One major obstacle is that music creation generally requires that the participant have prior training such as in playing a particular musical instrument. Another obstacle is how to achieve effective collaboration with other participants in the interactive music experience. These two obstacles have proven very difficult to overcome as it is undesirable to block untrained or unskilled people from participating (e.g., want to have the experience open to all visitors of a park) and want the music experience to be autonomous or self-directed by the participants (e.g., do not want to have to guide the participants with a human director).
Previously, interactive music experiences have been provided by systems, such as video game systems in which the players “play” a guitar or drums, which rely on visual techniques to create the experience. For example, the game or music experience system may include touch-sensitive game controls or tabletop displays and/or gestural recognition systems to identify user inputs and use visual graphics provided on a game monitor (e.g., a television or computer screen) to instruct participants in how to engage the system including when and which notes to play or input. This arrangement may be useful in some settings, but there are many settings including areas within a theme or amusement park where it is more desirable to allow the participants to have more agency and for the game or music system to run autonomously.
Stated differently, it is desirable for the collaborative music to be created without a human leader or director and with each participant having the perception that they are free to provide input without visual graphics prompting or fully choreographing their actions. However, it is also desirable for a game to be open to and fun for a group of participants and not just limited to one or two players. Further, it is desirable for the game or music system to be configured to help the group actually create “music” that is enjoyable to listen to by the participants and also to observers and not just create a cacophony of noises or chaotic sounds, and this is true even when the participants may not have met prior to the gaming experience.